Robin Williams: how we got it all wrong

Robin Williams: the terrorist in his brain

About all I can say about this piece of writing (click on link, above) is that it's extremely important.

When Robin Williams killed himself two years ago, he was, in essence, already dead. But by the time the true story came out (in the results of the autopsy, which took three months), everyone had moved on. When it happened, there were lots of editorials written about how he was a sad clown who killed himself because he secretly suffered from depression (as in "but doctor, I AM Pagliacci").  His suicide spawned a lot of fevered articles about how we really really have to stop stigmatizing mental illness because look what it can do, even to a rich and famous person (and it's REALLY not supposed to happen to them!). A few people claimed he was "selfish" and just moping over his career slowing down, throwing his life away to hurt his family. And I remember a lot of people flung up web sites and Facebook pages just to talk about their depression because they were sick and tired of being ashamed of it and hiding it, but those sites just kind of faded away after a while. At any rate, I don't see them any more.

Here is what really happened.

Williams died from the effects of a horrible disease called Lewy Body Dementia. It devoured him, mind and body, frighteningly quickly. Though the symptoms caused his doctors to believe it was Parkinson's, it wasn't. It was something so much worse that I can barely get my head around it. I have no idea why anyone should have to go through such a hell on earth, and I believe he ended it while he felt he still could. 

Because no one had heard of Lewy Body Dementia and because people preferred to just see him as a sad clown and a poster boy for Reducing The Stigma, and because they had lost interest anyway, the public missed it almost completely.

Robin Williams' widow wrote this eloquent piece, this cri du coeur about the hell they walked through together,  for a neurological journal. They probably would not normally publish a piece by a non-neurologist.  But this woman got a closer look at the ravages of Lewy Body than all of them put together. It is an incredible piece of writing, long, but it barely scratches the surface. It is almost unbearable to read because it brings home the fact that all our lives hang by a thread, all the time. It is a powerful truth, and it continues to be powerful whether we believe it or not.

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Hilda in the autumn

 
Nothing's quite as lovely.

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Trump it

trump
(trʌmp)

1. n (Instruments) a trumpet or the sound produced by one
2. (Ecclesiastical Terms) the last trump the final trumpet call that according to       the belief of some will awaken and raise the dead on the Day of Judgment
3. vb (Music, other) (intr) to produce a sound upon or as if upon the trumpet
4. (Music, other) (tr) to proclaim or announce with or as if with a fanfare
5. (intr) slang Brit to expel intestinal gas through the anus
[from Old French trompe, from Old High German trumpa trumpet; compare trombone]

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Robert Frost is a complete NOBODY!

STOPPING BY THE WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING BY DONALD J. TRUMP

BY ROTTINGPOST ON MARCH 25, 2016 • ( 140 COMMENTS )

I have a pretty good idea whose woods these are, believe me.
And let me tell you something, my people say he’s a complete nobody.
This guy lives in the village. So what if he sees me stopping here?
I dare him to sue me! I dare him!

And by the way, this snow is pathetic.
These are by far, the least downy flakes ever!
I hear they had to import them from Canada.
I don’t know. Maybe they did. Maybe they didn’t. We’re looking into it.

My horse – he’s the most incredible horse, seriously,
I have the greatest, the classiest horses –
My horse doesn’t even know what the hell we’re doing here.
The horses love me though. They do.
They’re always shaking their bells at me, it’s very loving.
It’s a beautiful thing.

Let me tell you something, these woods are an embarrassment.
They’re not dark. They’re not deep. They’re nothing. They’re for losers.
And I cannot wait to sue this guy.
I cannot wait to sue this guy.


PLEASE NOTE. This is the way it appeared. You know as well as I do that
the poem is "Stopping BY Woods", not "by THE Woods". I'm sort
of hoping that's part of the satire and not ignorance on the part of Rottingpost.

Drama in the back yard

(Please note. These gifs can run slow at first, or at least they do for me. Once they have gone through a full cycle, usually 10 or 15 seconds, they should run smoothly.) The first day I ever worked with the video camera, every bird in the neighborhood suddenly showed up - including some we had rarely seen before. This is a female flicker who has taken to the suet feeder. She hung around for quite a long time - oh, so beautiful, while I scrambled to capture video of her.  I hadn't put the camera on the tripod yet and was wobbling all over the place. I don't know when we'll see her again.

Up close and personal with a Steller's jay. These guys are frequent visitors and tend to gulp and guzzle the seeds, quickly emptying out the feeder. They are so beautiful, almost as mystical at the flickers.

We were amazed that the flicker hung around for so long. In this case, it flew down and pecked at the crack in the door. Flickers are a kind of woodpecker and would normally go after grubs in the ground. This time it actually used the feeder (very briefly), hammering away at it.

Squirrels! We have three baby squirrels living in the back yard. This happens every year. They were likely born in the spring and are SO CUTE that we can't bear to keep them away (like so many bird-feeding people try to). We couldn't believe they'd go after suet or be able to get to it. Obviously they can. Occasionally we get fat bushy-tailed grey squirrels, and even the odd red squirrel which is particularly adorable.

We have tons of juncos in the yard. This is an example of a particularly handsome male. They just hang around and eat, mostly the fallout from the feeder. They are easygoing and don't attack each other, believing there is plenty to go around.

And this is the miracle - even more miraculous than the appearance of the flicker. This is a spotted towhee, a bird we have only rarely seen, and always on the ground. Not sure why so many amazing birds showed up when I was using the video camera for the first time! 

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